the w i l d in all of us
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”
— MARY OLIVER
The first time I heard Mary Oliver’s Poem ‘Wild Geese’, I was in a yoga class. My teacher read it out to us as a meditation - as a sort of prayer. As I lay there listening, something deep within me stirred. A call that was familiar, but long-forgotten.
At this time in my life I was still working a career that made me feel trapped. Still hoping to find a version of life in which my passions didn’t have to be stifled. I was searching for something I couldn’t yet name.
These were also the early days of my yoga practice. As I reflect now, I can see that I owe so much to the insights, clarity and healing that came to greet me on my mat during those months. Although in other areas of my life I felt stuck, ignored and frustrated - yoga afforded me a space to meet myself again. To greet the version of myself who wasn’t scared to journey towards the unknown, who wouldn’t settle for days that left me feeling unheard and lost.
At the same time I was healing from deep wounds that I had only begun to acknowledge. I was still finding my voice and my independence and beginning to relearn the ways I had been taught to see myself.
This poem, as so many of Mary Oliver’s works have since, shifted something deep within me. Allowed me to release a grip I hadn’t known I had been holding. reminded me that we are wild things deep in our bones. We need passion, we need to allow ourselves to feel; deeply. We must let go of the false ways that society tells us to ‘be good’. We can discard this idea of the perfect life, the perfect self. We can love what we love as all wild things do. This is how we feed the world. How we heal ourselves.
I am thankful every day for the beauty that surrounds me. In poetry, in the natural world, in art. These are the things that free me, that keep me striving to become myself as fully as possible, that allowed me to shift into a new version of myself some years ago as I lay on my yoga mat.
